Tag: Shane Greene

The regular season is so close. The taste of baseball that counts is palatable. In the time between, because we are not there yet, let us look at starts from 2015 once again.

Using Baseball Reference’s Play Index I was able to grab all 4,858 starts from 2015. This includes each game line from each starting pitcher who started each individual game. Before we dig deep into this data lets answer the easy questions as it relates to our scoring…

660 starts, or 13.58% of the starts last year, ended up being negative points for the day. Ouch. Of those awful starts, the worst five were led by everyone’s favorite Jeremy Guthrie (pictured above, what the hell is wrong with his elbow):

Wow! I think it should come as little surprise that two of the top five, and several of the best starts overall, came in September. Those September call-ups can make a difference compared to the rest of the season.

However, September call-ups do go both ways. As we can see below, the average points per start goes way down in September.

Average PPS by Month

April 24.25
May 24.97
June 25.47
July 25.04
August 23.25
September 22.29

Shorter outings, extra pitchers sitting in the bullpen, rookies getting a shot, injuries taking a toll, pitch counts… Everything could be counting into that low September number. It was most surprising to me that August was trending downwards so dramatically. It really catches up to September quickly.

Diving a bit deeper into those monthly numbers. You see a similar trend in innings pitched per start.

April 5.73 IP
May 5.94 IP
June 5.96 IP
July 5.90 IP
August 5.80 IP
September 5.55 IP

Well, that is interesting. Starts in April are shorter than August by some small fraction, but April starts are good for a point more per start over starts in August. Obviously pitcher quality plays a huge role. Pitching is not a healthy thing to do and by August if the pitcher was going to break down, he is already broken by now. You can see it there.

In this kind of fantasy baseball league, starts are a very important commodity. I feel like the whole point of this post is to drive home how valuable those 6th, 7th and 8th starters on your roster are. Week 1, for most teams, you may not even use them at all. Barring some kind of amazing luck, you can see here that come August and early September when playoff races are finishing and the playoffs are starting, pitching gets thinner quickly.

You might just start to find comfort in having those extra guys sitting around and doing nothing in April, because you can see that the future is dark and full of terror.

Who’s your Haddy?

Looking up and down, yep! Yet another stars and scrubs strategy with some interesting middle men tossed in. I love Mike Trout‘s value, the best player in baseball got paid the 3rd most auction budget by some margin. A few things went really right here, and a few look really concerning. Let’s dive in!

Hitters – Great

The starting line up is really fricking good. I don’t know that there is truly a hole in the 1-10 spots. Salvador Perez plays everyday and scores points, Carlos Santana and Adrian Gonzalez for under $60 combined is a steal. Jason Kipnis and Todd Frazier are guys who can finish top 5 at their positions and Haddy didn’t pay to see it. Ben Zobrist was a steal at $14. Trout is Trout. There’s no clear number two utility hitter here, which hurts the overall rating a smidgen. Also I do not love the dollar value that Mookie Betts sold for. Jung-ho Kang is curious. Run 1000 simulations and how many times does Kang for $33 outscore Asdrubal Cabrera for $3? Yikes.

Pitchers – Alright

Jacob deGrom seems poised to have a stellar season. There’s no question about his star value. Michael Wacha is good, but there seems to be looming questions about his pitch arsenal. Is Justin Verlander a legit 3? The back end of this rotation has potential, but they’ll be asked to perform probably before Haddy would like to rely on them. The relievers are nothing to sniff at, maybe they’re okay, maybe they’re not. They will get holds you can assume. The back end of starters is iffy. I’m not high on Trevor Bauer or Ervin Santana, is there a fifth starter in the Matt Wisler, Drew Hutchinson, Jeff Locke, Robert Erlin, Shane Greene group? Eeeshh

Depth – Not quite

Now, Haddy’s starters have positional flexibility which saves this team from being in the uh-oh category. The pitchers are not likely holding anything together here. Haddy should be able to swing some positions here and there to keep a good line up going daily, but there is a player or two missing here.

Why 2016 would be bad…

Mike Trout and/or Jacob deGrom gets hurt. The hill just gets so much higher after that. Kang being bad isn’t enough to sink it, but his weight will be pulling on the team down on the daily. Maybe Mookie Betts ends up just being good instead of great, Todd Frazier doesn’t adjust to the American League, Kipnis, Santana, and A-Gone begin their decline. Maybe the season goes south if Jacob deGrom buzzes his hair. Who knows.

Why 2016 would be good…

This team starts shining bright when one of those starting pitchers that Haddy bought for under ten dollars turns into a star. Or just if Jung-Ho Kang is a earning his salary. Honestly Haddy’s hitters plus deGrom will carry him to victories this year. It is not hard to see how this roster goes from pretty close to good to great. Perhaps Pedro Alvarez ends up being a legit DH in the American League? Hell Mike Trout‘s probably good enough to carry.